RacheyJ's Life: Our Homeschool Day... 128 and some history....

Since I recently started this blog I have not said many things about our homeschool journey. So with that a little history......

When the oldest kids started school I remember thinking "Wow.. I sure would like to homeschool but I wouldn't know where to begin and I don't want to mess up their education." Little did I know that the public school system could do this as well.... Anyway, late in 2008 our pastor held a class for parents that talked about how it was biblically up to the parents to educate their children in the home. Now he didn't necessarily mean you must homeschool he just stated that as parents entrusted with children from God is was our job to teach them in all things. At this point in time we knew a few families who homeschooled and began to ask question. What curriculum do you use? How long are your school days? How do you know you are doing a good job? Our friends kindly and patiently answered our questions as well as they could and sent us a multitude of websites and book recommendations that we could use to learn more and see if this would be right for us. In the last 4-5 months of 2008 my husband and I researched, talked and prayed about his decision. Finally in early 2009 we made the decision to give it one year. We went to the closest Homeschool conference in Indianapolis listened to speakers, looked at every booth that sold curriculum and that first night in the hotel room sorted out what we planned to buy and use for this first year. We also decided to let the kids finish out the 2008 - 2009 public school year as I was still working full time and we planned to start our first homeschool year in July 2009. From there it has been great and I cannot even imagine putting the kids back in public school.

We did have a rocky start to our year as I found out just how FAR BEHIND the school system had let my oldest son fall. I knew he was struggling but had no idea why. Now I know, when a new skill was learned if he didn't understand they moved on with the rest of the students and here he was stuck not learning that skill and unable to learn the next skill. I started the oldest two on a "5th grade curriculum" track but quickly learned that with my oldest son I would need to slow down and reteach some things for math and for language arts I had to move to a 3rd grade level and work my way back up. My oldest son who would have went into 5th grade public school did not know what a plot was, a conflict, how to write a paragraph, use punctuation, where to find the publisher of a book, how to find a book in the library, how to determine the main characters, and reading out loud was just scary. I went back to a 3rd grade level and in under a year I have worked him up to almost the end of 4th grade. It is my hope he will be all caught up by the end of our 2010-2011 school year.

As for the younger two boys I have also made a few changes here and there. We started the year using Rod and Staff for language arts but I have since switched to My Father's World and they are doing great. I would say J is ahead of most Kindergartners and I is becoming quite a fluent reader. They are actually starting to enjoy reading.

After our most recent trip to the Indianapolis homeschool conference last month I began using a tip I learned from one of the speakers. He stated that to help kids enjoy reading create a book basket. Then appoint 15 minutes a day for book basket time. There are only 3 rules for book basket at our house.

You must have a book in your hands the entire 15 minutes.
You must remain quietly in your seat for the entire 15 minutes.
There is no rule as to what book you have in your hands during this time.

Note: There is no rule saying they must actually read the book during this time.
They absolutely LOVE book basket time.

Here is our book basket.

Green Eggs and Ham is currently J's FAVORITE as he almost has it memorized and can "Read" it to everyone. Its very cute. We also try to have an hour of group reading time everyday where each kid reads for 15 minutes. J with the help of me.

Group Reading Time

Here is S reading while M listens and waits for his turn.

Here are J and I listening

AND what every homeschooling parent likes to see...

Reading on their own after school time is over S is reading to herself and M is reading a story to his younger brothers. This melted my heart.

So as far as our adventure in homeschool it has been a blessing and I have learned to have more patience throughout this year. The kids are learning in leaps and bounds and they all LOVE homeschooling (they were skeptical at the beginning and begged to go to "real school" to see their friends for the first 2 months).

Here are some pictures from our class today..

US Geography "Where is Delaware? What is it's Capital?"